SAFe 5.0 Distilled: Achieving Business Agility with the Scaled Agile Framework

by Richard Knaster, Dean Leffingwell

SAFe® 5.0: The World's Leading Framework for Business Agility

"Those who master large-scale software delivery will define the economic landscape of the twenty-first century. SAFe 5.0 is a monumental release that I am convinced will be key in helping countless enterprise organizations succeed in their shift from project to product."–Dr. Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and author of the book Project to Product

Business agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to unprecedented market changes, threats, and emerging opportunities with innovative business solutions.

SAFe® 5.0 Achieving Business Agility with Scaled Agile Framework® explains how adopting SAFe helps enterprises use the power of Agile, Lean, and DevOps to outflank the competition and deliver complex, technology-based business solutions in the shortest possible time.

This book will help you

Understand the business case for its benefits, and the problems it solves Learn the technical, organizational and leadership competencies needed for business agility Refocus on customer centricity with design thinking Better align strategy and execution with Lean Portfolio Management Learn the leadership skills needed to thrive in the digital age Increase the flow of value to customers with value stream networks Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Genres: Business, Reference, Technical, Nonfiction, Management

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 5, 2020

Reviews

[Jurgen Appelo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A monster of a mash-up of many dozens of ideas and models from other sources, many of them butchered and misrepresented to make them fit the framework.

[Kate]

A necessary read for an exam but boring as batshit

[Toni Marinov · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there are a lot of interesting insights in the book as to how to drive the implementation of Agile and SAFe practices in an organization, i find two points very annoying:

1) The first half of the book was full of references to the website. If i wanted to read through the website, what is the point of the book then?
2) The second half of the book is a constant selling of courses and services of the Program Consultants. It gets very annoying when it’s in your face all the time and one starts to wonder if the book was written with the primary goal of helping organisations or just to make money for the authors

Having just finished the book, I will now plan allocating time to go to the website for more information as a lot of topics were only briefly touched on and I need more details.

A bit disappointing, expected this to be better and provide more details and not just skim the surface.

[Luca Barillá · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what I just read. A lot of concepts within a thick fog.

[Vera Lynn Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the content was decent, I have issues with books that have misspelled words. The publishing company should have taken advantage of spell check.

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this to learn what the dark side is about. SAFe actually seems to be much more thought out than I thought prior to reading this book. That said, not my favorite framework. I have done large scale (multiple teams) agile before and you don't need this much ceremony. There are much better, simpler ways. Read the early works by Sutherland that handles large scale scrum. Or process proposed by Bas Vodde. Much simpler and more true to the agile idea than the SAFe framework

As far as the book goes, it is much fun as PMBoK from PMI on traditional project management.
It describes the parts of the framework but fails to give much insight into common pitfalls or alternative ways to do things. There are no war stories or colorful explanations of any kind in the book. Instead this is a list of process elements.

The early chapters are intended to be some sort of description on why agile and lean is the way. There are many many better books and material that covers this.

For someone who works with SAFe I doubt this is a very useful reference. And for those new to it and want to learn, it is just too boring.

[Yiannis Koutros · Rating 1 out of 5]

This technical book is more a series of wiki articles, ordered in a way to understand the context of the framework and the necessary steps to implement it. Unfortunately, the author touches the surface of critical elements of the change required to adopt this framework. My expectations were higher, and I expected the book to deep dive into aspects such as finance, budgeting, capacity management, performance management. If someone does not like to navigate the site of Safe, this book may be fit her needs, even though there are a lot of topics where the author refers to the Safe site.

[Johnny Mosley · Rating 3 out of 5]

SAFe expands upon agile manifesto and scrum framework to scale across the enterprise. This is a solid introduction with some great content. Generally an easy read albeit a bit repetitive at times - with more corporate buzz words that a room filled with MBA's. Recommended.

[Bernard Sia · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you really need a way to navigate how the website works the book helps. Otherwise the site is pretty helpful to get through the exam.

[Nathaniel Inman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book includes too many anecdotal or original material without enough substantive references to prior work. It seems tailored to a consultant who plans on instituting SAFe or a member of executive leadership whose job it is to manage or institute changes to an agile portfolio. It feels mostly introductory in nature and would pair suitably with the professional Scrum series to fill many of its missing gaps. The amount of acronyms within is incredible, be prepared to flip to the glossary a few times. My page tabs are on: 60, 83, 107, 132, 146 & 267.

[Tim Schwamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

As Expected

As an experienced SPC, I found nothing new here -- simply a compendium of the SAFe website and training materials. Thus, it was easy to breeze through it. Even still, there were a handful of.good reminders in here. This could be a nice reference book or a good intro for those not familiar with SAFe and daunted by the scope of articles on the framework website, but, otherwise, I'd save your money and just use the website.

[Michele · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have abandoned reading a book only a handful of time in my life. This is one of those times. It's a collection of random thoughts that seems to come from thin air (maybe there is some research behind, but it's made sure you cannot feel it). No structure. Each page seems written in a different style and by a different person. It was such a pain to get as far as I got.

[Wilhelm Eklund · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great way to approach SAFe since it tells a bit of a story.

This framework is like a good agile mixed-tape of industry leading techniques. I like the focus on the principles rather than specific practises.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I and my team in our Book Club Discussion group at work found the book useful as a reference whilst going through the SAFe training course. As a book to read, it was a bit disjointed and didn't really work going from cover to cover.

[Robert Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting additions since the SAFe distilled for version 4.5. let down a little by she formatting errors in part 3 of the book

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giver en god og kort gennemgang af principperne bag SAFe. Samt en gennemgang af implementation roadmap.

[zoagli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected to find in-depth explanations or concrete examples, but the content is at the same fluffy level as the website – and I write this as a convinced SAFe practitioner.

[Ugur Akin · Rating 4 out of 5]

good book, but training with homepage is more up to date :)

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is nice as a reference book, but not to learn SAFe from. Lots of bulletpoint lists.

[Cemal Duman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Problem with SAFe materials it is very distributed. This book solves that problem and provides some good study sequence.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great intro on SAFe. I'm surprised by how many other best practices made their way into it.

[Maik Broxterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent read, only referring to trainings when it becomes especially interesting on the implementation of SAFe.

[Christophe BAIXAS]

Il suffit de lire les commentaires sur cette page pour comprendre que l'appréciation qu'ont les lecteurs de cet ouvrage peut être très diverses. Je ne sais pas si je serai amené à utiliser le modèle SAFe mais quoi qu'il en soit j'ai trouvé l'exposé des principes de même que la structuration de ces derniers très utile pour ma pratique professionnelle.
Le texte est plutôt court et organisé en points précis relativement denses.
Il faut effectivement "entrer" dans les concepts exposés ce qui , personnellement, ne m'a pas posé de problèmes.
Disons que les illustrations et les principes peuvent constituer le point de départ de pratiques dans l'entreprise dans laquelle on se trouve. Il n'est pas question de monter l'intégralité de l'organisation SAFe mais plutôt de comprendre quels principes respecter, quelles compétences développer.
Le fait que le livre reprenne des schémas et explications disponibles sur le Web ne constitue pas un problème : je veux justement pouvoir avoir un livre entre les mains, l'annoter, l'emmener avec moi et avoir des explications complémentaires.

De manière générale cet ouvrage est assez pratique, rempli de suggestions intéressantes.
Pour ceux qui se plaignent de la "mise en pratique" c'est une critique malheureusement classique qui accompagne toute approche "complexe".
La complexité requiert des adaptations de "haute couture", rien n'est directement transposable "as is".
Il faut voir ici des considérations à prendre en compte, des conseils et les adapter en fonction de lectures et expériences complémentaires.
Il revient donc à chaque lecteur de se frayer une voie et ce livre constitue une aide précieuse dans ce sens.
A recommander !